


Resistance Union

by twofrontteethstillcrooked



Series: Star Wars snippetfic [6]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, More snippety than usual tbh, snippetfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-12-14 07:35:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11778423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twofrontteethstillcrooked/pseuds/twofrontteethstillcrooked
Summary: She thought about what to say next. "I do not believe violence is the answer, but last night it was an answer."~ ~ ~A scene from an activism-based modern au becauseyet_intrepid's prompt was so cool.(I ran out of brain/time before I could get further, but that's not their fault.)





	Resistance Union

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yet_intrepid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yet_intrepid/gifts).



The morning after the riot Rey woke up in Finn's office by rolling off the dingy orange couch he'd inherited from Sella, the last person to hold the position, who'd inherited it from someone with terrible taste in couches. The discarded mask she'd worn hours earlier seemed to squint sideways at her from its location beneath the adjacent chair. When she shifted, atop a number of file folders she'd knocked over on the trip down to the cold cement floor, Rey remembered in slow motion how it had felt to punch one of those violent opposing protestors -- _fascists_ , her mind hissed -- right in his crabby face. A lingering pain threaded up her arm from knuckles to elbow.

Down the hall someone's phone was ringing. Multiple someone's phones were ringing: Tico called out "Little help here?" and people started answering with various official greetings, all variations of "Resistance Union. Yes, I'm sorry, Director Organa is not available at the moment. No, apologies, neither is President Skywalker. Would you care to leave a message?" 

As Rey pushed up and onto her feet she could hear the Director herself, in her office three doors down, ask sharply, "What on earth are you doing here?"

"Doc says I'll be fine in a week, no problem." From a distance Poe sounded downright breezy. Figured.

"Try four to six." Finn sounded less convinced, and probably had the same incredulous expression Organa did, Rey estimated.

"Less than two months," Poe argued. 

By the time Rey was in Organa's doorway Finn was dragging over a metal folding chair to prop beneath Poe's bandaged knee.

"Buddy--"

"Stop," Finn said, pushing Poe back down with a hand on his shoulder. "I got it." He gave Poe a very pointed look, not unlike Rey had seen him give BB-8 when he wanted the dog to _Sit_. 

Poe leaned back into the cushions of Organa's vastly more attractive settee and thrummed his fingers on the arm. Finn brought over a dusty backpack and sat it beside him before handing over a travel mug of something steamy and sitting down himself. He rubbed a hand over his face -- his knuckles were bruised like Poe's, and a little bloodied like Rey's -- and when he opened his eyes again he saw Rey.

"You okay?" he asked.

She nodded, less for lack of anything to say and more because the utter sincerity in his voice made it hard to speak.

"Good morning, Rey," Organa said from her desk, where she was unpacking a laptop and plugging it in beside her desktop keyboard.

"Good morning," Rey managed. "What's the diagnosis?"

Whatever Poe was drinking made his eyes bright, or maybe he was just on really good painkillers. Or both. "Dozen stitches, no surgery."

"No surgery, but extensive physical therapy starting tomorrow," Finn countered. 

"Expected to make a full recovery," Poe said, taking another huge sip from his mug. "Did you get a donut? There are donuts." 

He smiled so easily, like free donuts solved all ills, Rey couldn't help but smile in return. When she caught Finn's eye Finn gave her a look that made her want to laugh, which she probably shouldn't do, so she clamped her back teeth together. Finn's eyebrow was a signal of camaraderie and exasperation.

"What can I do to help?" Rey asked of any and everyone.

"Help Finn get Poe out to the Hover driver and then come back and see me and Luke." Organa hadn't looked up from the screen where she was rapidly typing what sounded like a series of IMs; the pings seemed to be landing in Skywalker's office across the hall.

Poe started, "I can walk out to the car by myself-- But hey, I'm not leaving yet, we have to strategize what our formal response is going to be, ma'am--"

"Hoo-boy, do not ma'am me, Dameron." 

Organa stood up and handed Ematt a folder pulled seemingly at random from a stack on the corner of her desk; he'd snuck in behind Rey with a stealth that belied his age, and snuck away in equal silence. 

"We all had a long night, and you're not the only one at the rally who was hurt," she said to Poe. "However, you're the only one on our payroll who needed actual medical attention afterwards. Right now what we need you to strategize is in what order you're going to sleep, bathe, and eat, at home, before coming back rested and able to pass a narcotics test in a couple of days."

Finn, looking up at the ceiling, muttered under his breath, "Told him that already, didn't I?"

"And you should have listened to Finn," Organa said, but kindly.

"Okay. Okay." Poe sighed a sheepish sort of sigh and began the long effort of standing up, with Finn as a crutch on one side and Rey on the other. The trip out the back door was slow but hampered only by almost being run down by Snap coming in with another sheetcake-sized box from Biscuit Baron.

"How many boxes," Finn began, eyes wide.

"Seven," Snap said, "I had a coupon. This one's sausage tacos. One for the road, Poe?"

They wadded Poe into the back of the waiting car, waved goodbye, and then stood there while the driver thumbed his address into her phone. 

A blurry orange sun rose over the far horizon directly into a bank of black clouds.

"Wonderful," Finn commented, after thunder rumbled in the distance.

"I hear you got in a couple of good hits last night before the SWAT van showed up." Rey smiled a sad-yet-conspiratorial little smile. 

Finn scratched his cheek and seemed to just discover the bruise there. "Not my best work."

"Bet it felt pretty great, didn't it?"

He smiled at that. "Maybe a little too great?" He shook his head. "I truly did not want to be right about what the FO was capable of."

"Yeah," Rey sighed. "Me neither."

Pava stuck her head out the door, saw Finn was there, turned around, caught something heavy, turned back around and threw the heavy mass at Finn.

He caught what turned out to be his own duffle with an, "Oof, what?" and Pava said, "Organa said she didn't want to see you for two days either."

The driver rolled down her window. "Some president guy inside there texted me there were two passengers now?"

"Bye," Rey said, giving Finn a kiss on his bruised cheek.

He relented and crawled in the back seat with Poe. The last thing Rey heard before the car pulled away was Poe saying, "Ah ha, look! They filled your bag with donuts."

So at least Rey didn't have to worry those guys would starve, though it was possible the combination of codeine, caffeine, and sugar in Poe's bloodstream would eventually require Finn to smother him with a pillow.

When Rey walked back inside Pava and Kun were delegating revised assignments to the various division heads, council, and admins who'd gathered near the back in the largest office save the conference room at the front. Ackbar, at the big desk, was scrolling through a tablet with one hand and applying a band-aid to a welt above his left eye with the other hand. Connix, grimacing, was scribbling a timetable on the freestanding whiteboard in the middle of the room. Into the phone tucked between her shoulder and ear she told someone (surely a local journalist), "Please, Brad, check your so-called source, which we both know is merely some overpaid over-cocky proxy of Armitage Hux. You know as well as I the civilian review board has already been contacted, and our motion will be filed jointly with the ACLU..." She snapped her fingers and Suralinda picked up another receiver, ready to jump in with additional haranguing. 

Rey dug in her pocket and came up with the office key she'd been leant. Tico looked relieved to see her when Rey arrived at her cube.

"Any big epiphanies since 3 a.m.?" Tico asked, dark circles under her eyes and her pretty face filled with sympathy. Her barrette was askew. Rey felt too shy to point it out, so dropped the key in Tico's hand instead. 

Tico's phone rang, and she pushed a button to disconnect it. "They'll call back," she said.

"Going to go see Organa," Rey said, tipping her head in that direction. "Thanks for letting me crash here."

"Nah, it was nothing. Finn's idea." She smiled and then took an enormous breath, her smile turning pained as the phone bleated back to life. "Talk at lunch?"

Rey nodded. 

By the time she reached Organa's office again Skywalker had come out of his own and was occupying the space on the settee Finn and Poe had vacated. 

"Is that...six donuts you have there?" Rey asked.

Skywalker paused mid bite. "I'm saving half for later."

"Okay."

The Director closed the door and motioned for Rey to sit in one of the fancy chairs in front of her desk.

"We're considering our options for how best to proceed," Organa said, sounding tired. 

She looked at Rey and waited. Her gaze was not too probing, and Skywalker chewing away on the settee was nearly companionable. 

Rey thought about everything she'd experienced in the last 24 hours: the peaceful voting rights march giving way to chaos as the FO thugs arrived; the anguish of innocent people trying to protect their friends from an assault in part perpetrated by the very organizations who were supposed to protect all citizens equally. The smell of smoke and rot. The fascist she'd unmasked in the crushing struggle as the crowd surged, the surprising youthfulness of his features and confused hatred in his eyes -- disarmingly awful in its humanness, its sudden lack of anonymity -- before her fist connected so instinctively with his nose. Her own mask hadn't slipped, but she'd felt suffocated by it just the same.

"I would not presume to speak for any of your lieutenants or VPs. It wouldn't be fair to count me amongst even your volunteers, I mean, prior to last night." Rey cleared her throat. "But I have given our conversation from last week a lot of thought," she said, turning to address Skywalker, "as well as the conversations I've had over the last several weeks with Finn, and Poe, and others. You were right I didn't know exactly what it was this organization was trying to accomplish -- a fight for full restoration of voting rights feeds into a larger fight for civil rights, human rights, and not only protection or new laws or better enforcement of existing ones. It's more comprehensive than that. This organization is fighting for more than one right in isolation, whatever your charter says. 

"The FO showed themselves for who they truly are," Rey said. "And the hardest thing to accept is, in some people's eyes what happened last night strengthened the FO's cause at least as much as it did yours."

She thought about what to say next. "I do not believe violence is the answer, but last night it was _an_ answer."

"Hopefully not the final one," Organa said.

"No. But we have a literal fight to fight; for the FO this isn't something theoretical. They have some executives who speak with a diplomat's tongue, but what they believe in most is sheer brute force." Rey turned to Skywalker again. "You were right I wasn't ready to do the work."

He cocked his head. "And now?"

Rey took a deep breath. "I'm ready to begin now, I think." He did not look away and she revised her statement. "I know I am." She thought of something: "Kinda wish it hadn't taken a full scale riot to convince me of that."

Organa and Skywalker made a noise that could only be described as an amused, collective snort. 

Skywalker stood up and brushed donut crumbs off the front of his sweater. "Well, then. Dear sister--" Organa rolled her eyes fondly, "--may I officially present to you our newest secret agent?" He patted Rey's shoulder. "Come see me when she's done filling you in on today's agenda," he told her, while Organa took a long drink of tea.


End file.
